Media Watch Dog: Niki Savva’s ‘stale, pale, male’ Anti-Trump/Vance cliche fires a blank

Democratic presidential candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, earlier this week announced that 60-year-old Tim Walz, who has been in politics for about two decades, would be her running mate. Picture: AFP

STOP PRESS

● ABC’S IAN VERRENDER THROWS THE SWITCH TO HYPERBOLE ABOUT SKY NEWS

When news emerged during the morning of 9 August that News Corp is evaluating options about the future of Foxtel Group, ABC Radio Sydney 702 engaged Ian Verrender to discuss the matter. Your man Verrender is the ABC chief business correspondent.

After discussion focused on Foxtel in general, it then turned to Sky News Australia which goes out on the Foxtel subscription channel. Let’s go to the transcript:

Sarah Macdonald: I mean, this might be a stupid question. Are there any consequences for Sky News, say, Foxtel’s news channel?

Ian Verrender: Well, I guess if there was a new owner, they would probably go through it and have a look and see whether - well what kind of audience it has, if it has an audience at all. And whether, you know, it’s just a cost centre rather than a profit centre. And that would determine, really - any new buyer would look at it more from that point of view rather than from any other, you know, historical association they may have with it.

Now, as avid readers well know, the ABC TV Media Watch program – presenter Paul Barry, executive producer Timothy Latham – is always banging on about what it terms “Sky News After Dark”. Even during daylight saving time. In short, the taxpayer funded public broadcaster’s media program seems to need Sky News for material.

And yet, Ian Verrender, the ABC chief business correspondent, wonders on the ABC “if it [Sky News] has an audience at all”. Why would the ABC designated media expert (Paul Barry) waste time criticising Sky News if the ABC designated business expert (Ian Verrender) doubts whether it has an audience at all? Who knows?

If this is the case, then Messrs Barry and Latham – along with their staff of around ten – should look for another target. But they don’t. Which suggests that Comrade Verrender is into hyperbole with a little help from the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.

Q+A RETURNS WITH PK AND A FREE BUS RIDE AS AN INCENTIVE

Media Watch Dog can barely wait for the return of Q+A on Monday 12 August with Patricia (“Please call me PK”) Karvelas in the presenter’s chair – after a long break.

Lotsa thanks to the avid Canberra reader who pointed out that the taxpayer funded public broadcaster is putting on a “Free Bus Shuttle” to transport comrades from Goulburn to Queanbeyan where the telecast will take place. How exciting is that?

The Q+A Goulburn to Queanbeyan flyer refers to a Free Bus Shuttle from Goulburn. It doesn’t mention any free bus return to Goulburn. Moreover, the ride is not really “free” – it’s just that the tab is being picked up by the Australian taxpayer as part of the $1.1 billion handout the Conservative Free Zone receives from government each year.

MWD will report back on Q+A in Queanbeyan in the next issue.

Picture: Supplied

CAN YOU BEAR IT?

● NIKI SAVVA’S STALE/PALE/MALE ANTI-TRUMP/VANCE CLICHÉ FIRES A BLANK WHEN V.P. KAMALA HARRIS APPOINTS A 60-YEAR-OLD WHITE GUY AS HER RUNNING MATE

Could it be that United States Vice-President Kamala Harris and her advisers do not watch Nine Newspapers’ columnist Niki Savva when she appears on the ABC TV Insiders program? Apparently so, in view of the recent developments in US national politics.

As avid Media Watch Dog readers will recall, appearing on Insiders on Sunday 28 July Comrade Savva described the Donald J. Trump/J.D. Vance Republican ticket in the forthcoming US presidential election as “pale, male, stale”. Forget the fact that the “pale, male, stale” put-down is something of a cliché. The point is that the 40-year-old Vance is anything but stale and the 78-year-old Trump is still lively and anything but boring.

The Age/Sydney Morning Herald columnist implied on Insiders that Harris should pick Mark Kelly – the junior Democrat senator from Arizona who is 60 years old and has only been in the US Senate since 2020. However, he is a former astronaut. In short, Kelly is in no sense “stale”.

However, ignoring Niki Savva’s advice, earlier this week the 59-year-old Kamala Harris announced that the 60-year-old Tim Walz would be her running mate. How stale is that? For starters, the Governor of Minnesota is older than the Vice President. Moreover, he was elected to Congress in 2006 before becoming state governor. In other words, Walz has been in politics for about two decades – whereas Vance has been in politics for about two years.

Alas, The Age/SMH columnist declared that Vice-President Harris needed a non-stale bloke like Mark Kelly on her ticket. It so happened that Kamala Harris did not agree.

Which raises the question: Why did Niki Savva bother? And another one: Can You Bear It?

● PETER HARTCHER PREDICTS A COUP IN THE UNITED STATES IF DONALD TRUMP DOES NOT WIN IN NOVEMBER

While on the topic of Nine columnists – did anyone read Peter Hartcher’s column in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on 6 August titled “Harris illusions will aid Trump”? In case not, here’s Nine’s international and political editor’s conclusion:

If Trump is to win, he will need the MAGA mob to vote for him. But if he loses, he will need the mob to riot for him. After losing the 2020 election he incited his acolytes to storm the Capitol to block the certification of the election. They failed. Trump never has retracted, never has recanted and repeatedly promises “vengeance”. To this day, he refuses to commit to accepting an election loss….He is signalling plainly that he has no regard for the constitution.

Harris has one route to power – to win the election. Trump has two. To win the election or to claim power illegally, by force….Trump is a political wrecking ball. He will try to wreck Harris through the electoral system and, if that doesn’t work, he’ll wreck the electoral system. To expect otherwise is an illusion.

What a load of absolute tosh. Sure, there was a riot – note that your man Hartcher did not use the word “insurrection” – at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. But the rioters were not armed – and the only person killed was an unarmed female military veteran protester who was shot by Washington DC Capitol Police. In fact, many police/security guards were injured in the trade union riot outside Parliament House in Canberra in May 1996. But this rarely gets referred to in Nine Newspapers. Probably because the 1996 riot was directed at the Howard Coalition government.

As to Hartcher’s warning that, if Harris wins, Trump will “claim power illegally, by force”. Well, it would be some achievement. Trump would have to prevail over the Capitol Police, the FBI, various US police forces in the States and, possibly, the US Defence Force – as well as those Americans who oppose him. Trump would also have to take on – and prevail over – the 50 states.

Earlier in his column, Nine’s international and political editor wrote that it is an “illusion” to expect that Trump would not stage a coup if he was to lose on 5 November (US time). However, the evidence suggests that it is Hartcher who has thrown the switch to illusion on this occasion. Can You Bear It?

● QUELLE SURPRISE! LONG TIME JOURNALIST RICHARD ACKLAND NOW LECTURING OTHERS ABOUT (ALLEGEDLY) PUBLISHING LEAKED MATERIAL

As Media Watch Dog is wont to point out, it’s executive producers – rather than presenters – who decide which “talent” will be interviewed on the ABC. Often, the name of the producer is not known.

Whoever chose the talent for ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live on the night of Monday 5 August, wasn’t it great to hear one time ABC TV Media Watch’s presenter David Marr interview one-time ABC TV Media Watch presenter Richard Ackland on LNL (aka Late Night Left)? Just to make sure that this media incest is fully disclosed – there was more. Comrade Ackland is a former presenter of LNL – and David Marr recently replaced Phillip Adams as the contemporary presenter of LNL. How cosy is that?

The title of the segment was “Richard Ackland on the implications of Senator Linda Reynolds’ defamation case against Brittany Higgins”. Needless to say, the left-of-centre Ackland was in full sneering mode with respect to Liberal Party Senator Reynolds. However, MWD was most interested in Comrade Ackland’s double standard about the media publishing leaks.

Richard Ackland expressed concern that documents which had legal protection under what is called the Harman Principle had found their way to The Australian. It was reported that Brittany Higgins has claimed that the documents – involving her – were given to The Australian by Linda Reynolds. MWD does not know if this claim is correct. Then your man Marr raised this question – let’s go to the transcript:

David Marr: Richard, you’re a journalist. Surely you should applaud leaks.

Richard Ackland: This is the thing. I think there is a line somewhere which I have yet to discover. But journalism does depend to a large extent on leaks. But is there a point at which you upset the judicial system. And particularly, I suppose, if you’re a journalist that always is hammering the importance of the rule of law and the correct processes of the judicial system – then you should be, you know, a little bit more careful.

How about that? Comrade Ackland’s “the thing”, that is. Ackland has been publishing leaks all his journalistic career. But when a critic of Scott Morrison’s Coalition government, like Brittany Higgins, is adversely affected by leaks – it’s time to uphold “the importance of the rule of law and the correct processes of the judicial system” and support Ms Higgins.

So, there you have it. Richard Ackland – the former Australian Financial Review journalist, ABC radio and TV presenter, Fairfax Media and The Saturday Paper columnist and legal editor-at-large for The Guardian – who went on to become a publisher and editor of the law journals Justinian and the Gazette of Law and Journalism – rocked up on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster to have a whinge about leaks thought to assist a Liberal Party senator. Can You Bear It?

[Interesting. I note that on Late Night Live on 7 August, David Marr interviewed Naomi R. Cahn of the University of Virginia about the Murdoch succession issue. Professor Cahn’s insight into the legal case underway in Nevada was informed by leaks to the New York Times in the form of a sealed court document. The very practice that Comrade Ackland (somewhat surprisingly) frowned upon the previous evening. – MWD Editor.]

David Marr and Richard Ackland. Picture: Supplied

● NINE’S JACQUELINE MALEY’S SOFT INTERVIEW WITH ABC’S SARAH FERGUSON IN UP-MARKET DOUBLE BAY

As avid Media Watch Dog readers know, Ellie’s (male) co-owner just loves it when journalists interview other journalists about journalism. Such interviews are invariably soft – a bit like a Collingwood barracker interviewing the Collingwood Football Club’s coach about Collingwood.

So, at Hangover Time on Sunday 4 August, Hendo was delighted – truly delighted – to glance at the front cover of the Sun-Herald’s “Sunday Life” magazine. It contained a full cover pic of ABC TV presenter Sarah Ferguson dressed in a white suit with black high-heeled court shoes sitting on a bar stool. The heading was “`I wish I’d understood when I was younger what you need is knowledge’: Sarah Ferguson On Career, Family And Her Interview Wish List”. Wise advice, don’t you think?

Turn inside and there’s another pic of Ms Ferguson in a dark blue suit with white blouse and black slingback shoes – sans bar stool. Early on, readers learn that Ms Ferguson and Ms Maley “are having lunch at Next Door in Sydney’s Double Bay”. Well-off Teal Country – not far from the harbourside mansion of Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and a long way from Mr and Mrs Penrith and even further from Mr and Mrs Dandenong. On this occasion, Ferguson “is casual in a pink shirt and minimal jewellery”. So now you know.

Alas, there is not much in the Maley profile. Except that Ferguson tells an (unflattering) anecdote about former Channel 9 chief executive David Gyngell and his attitude to the female appearance. The interviewee tells her interviewer: “Please don’t make that the headline; because Gyngell was such a good guy.” But apparently it is quite okay for Comrade Maley to run the story in paragraph seven – despite Gyngell being a good guy. So, there you go.

It turns out that the Gyngell/Ferguson matter is the only fresh story of interest in the piece. Otherwise, it’s all about Ferguson the Magnificent. Maley praises the ABC personality’s Four Corners television series “The Killing Season” and “Code of Silence”.

But it’s a case of don’t-talk-about such series as “Trump/Russia” and “Revelation”.

In “Trump/Russia”, Ferguson came up with what she described as the “Story of the Century”. Namely, a conspiracy theory that Vladimir Putin managed (somehow) to get Donald J. Trump into the White House in January 2017. This was subsequently totally discredited by the Mueller Report in the United States.

Then there was part three of “Revelation” – where Ferguson ran untested allegations of historical child sexual abuse made against Cardinal George Pell. The charges made in this instance, were dropped by authorities. Ferguson made the error of believing what she wanted to believe – a familiar journalistic error. Moreover, she showed ignorance of the fact that Pell was interviewed in Rome by Victoria Police about this matter and indicated ignorance about Pell, the Catholic Church and even locations in Ballarat where the alleged crimes were alleged to have occurred. In short, Part 3 of “Revelation” was a dud – and certainly not to be raised at a nice lunch in Double Bay.

Er, that was about all. Except that the woman-in-white declares that she wishes that she understood, when younger, that “what you need is knowledge” – something that was lacking in both “Trump/Russia” and “Revelation”. Fancy that. And there was also Maley’s exclusive about the lunch:

Ferguson has come from the gym and has sore thigh muscles, so I suggest a restorative array of proteins and carbohydrates – pork, veal and ricotta meatballs, fresh curd with marinated peppers and charred sourdough, ceviche of coronation trout, and tuna carpaccio.

Come to think of it, it is a shame that Sarah Ferguson lacked knowledge when she did her (expensive) Four Corners’ special “Trump/Russia” and her “Revelation” hatchet job on Cardinal Pell.

The final paragraph of the fawn-again interview reveals that the 7.30 presenter is “studying Russian”. Could there be an update on “Russia/Trump” if Donald J. Trump wins the November election? If so, Can You Bear It?

[Er, no. Now that you ask. However, I’m interested in the lunch menu. Ellie has arthritic hips – which leads to sore thighs. I’ll tell Hendo to try putting the spoiled Blue Heeler on a diet that includes some pork, veal and ricotta meatballs and tuna carpaccio. – MWD Editor.]

● NINE’S REVIEWER PAT SHEIL FUDGES PAUL R. EHRLICH’S HISTORY AS FAILED ALARMIST PROPHET

Did anyone read Pat Sheil’s review of Life: A Journey Through Science & Politics by Paul R Ehrlich in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 3 August? Early on in the review, the following point is made about Paul R. Ehrlich’s most “influential and controversial book, 1968’s The Population Bomb” – which he co-wrote with his wife Anne:

The book makes terrifying predictions of the dire consequences for our species of unfettered reproduction, and sold more than 2 million copies (a population explosion in itself, at least in the field of popular science writing). Thankfully, many of Ehrlich’s most frightening fecundity forecasts have failed to materialise, including mass starvation in India, Egypt and China by the 1980s, largely due to the success of the “green revolution” and its vastly increased crop yields.

Believe it or not, Comrade Sheil leaves it at that. Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb was replete with false prophecies. In short, Paul and Anne Ehrlich were hopelessly – and dangerously – wrong about population. As the Labor MP and economist Dr Andrew Leigh writes in The Shortest History of Economics (Black Inc, 2004):

In 1968, biologists Anne and Paul Ehrlich declared that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over”. They went on to forecast that “in the 1970s the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death”. The Ehrlichs callously advised ending all food aid to India, a nation that was “so far behind in the population food game that there is no hope that our food aid will see them through to self-sufficiency”. India’s population is now more than twice as large as it was when the Ehrlichs wrote their book.

Pat Sheil is fully aware of Ehrlich the Failed Prophet. But he let him and his wife off the hook in his review. This is Shiel’s conclusion:

In the end, despite the controversy and hyperbole from all sides, Ehrlich included, his central thesis has essentially evolved into mainstream environmental thinking. There are too many of us, that’s for sure. From 2 billion or so when Ehrlich was born, to more than four times that number today and rising. Something has to give, and here’s just one number from this entertaining – at times scary – memoir that drives home the point: “Human bodies and those of our big domestics (cows and pigs, for example) [now] constitute 96 per cent of the biomass of mammals on Earth.”

This overlooks the fact that if world leaders had adopted Ehrlich’s 1968 advice to end all food aid to India – millions of Indians would have died. And yet Comrade Sheil reckons that Ehrlich’s central thesis has evolved into “mainstream environmental thinking that ‘there are too many of us’”. But your man Ehrlich, at age 92, is writing books that are published on paper – apparently not worrying too much about his own emissions. Can You Bear It?

AN ABC UPDATE

ABC TV’s 7.30 LOOKS BACK (WITHOUT VIEWPOINT DIVERSITY) ON THE 1974 JOINT SITTING OF THE AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT

On Monday 5 August ABC TV’s 7.30 ran a segment presented by 7.30 political correspondent Laura Tingle titled “Whitlam’s Joint Sitting”. Here’s how it was presented:

The dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 has long overshadowed another monumental event in Australian political history from that era. Just a year earlier, following his double dissolution election, Gough Whitlam asked the Governor-General to convene a joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Laura Tingle looks back on its 50th anniversary.

The Joint Sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate, held on 6-7 August 1974, deserves an important place in Australian history – along with coverage on 7.30 half a century after the event. Here’s the background.

After over two decades in opposition – Gough Whitlam led the Labor Party to government on 2 December 1972. The Whitlam government had a majority in the House of Representatives but lacked a majority in the Senate. After the election, William McMahon stood down as Liberal Party leader and was replaced by Billy Snedden.

The Whitlam government had what it regarded as an important reform agenda. However, the Snedden-led Opposition did not readily accept defeat.

When the Opposition led by Malcolm Fraser (who had replaced Snedden in March 1975), blocked supply in October/November 1975, Gough Whitlam refused to call an election and attempted to govern without supply. The Whitlam government was dismissed by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975. Whitlam did not believe that he could lead Labor to victory in 1975 – which is why he did not advise the Governor-General to call an election.

It was different in April 1974 when the Opposition, led by Billy Snedden, threatened to block supply in the Senate. Whitlam believed he could win an election in 1974 so he sought – and attained – a double dissolution election for 18 May 1974. The Whitlam government was returned with a similar majority in the House of Representatives but still lacked a majority in the Senate.

Labor’s manageable majority in the House of Representatives when added to its Senate minority meant that Whitlam had a narrow majority in a Joint Sitting. Whitlam attained authority from the Governor-General Sir Paul Hasluck to hold a Joint Sitting of both the House and Senate under Section 75 of the Constitution after the Coalition continued to defeat legislation in the Senate. In the event, the Whitlam government was able to pass key legislation with respect to six bills. The most important of which were (i) the creation of Medibank and universal health cover, (ii) electoral system reform and (iii) the establishment of new federal powers over the resources industry.

7.30’s coverage of the politicians involved in the Joint Sitting was balanced. John Dawkins (Labor) and John Howard (Coalition) were interviewed by Laura Tingle. Moreover, documentary footage was shown of Labor’s Gough Whitlam, Fred Daly, Bill Hayden, Rex Connor and Paul Keating – along with the Coalition’s Doug Anthony, Jim Killen, Billy Snedden and Bruce Lloyd.

The problem with the 7.30 segment was a lack of viewpoint diversity among commentators. Laura Tingle is a left-of-centre journalist who was close to some members of the Whitlam Labor government. La Tingle interviewed three commentators. Namely, (i) the historian Jenny Hocking (a fully financial member of the Gough Whitlam Fan Club), (ii) the left-of-centre Niki Savva (who was close to some members of the Whitlam Labor government) and (iii) leftist historian Frank Bongiorno (a Coalition antagonist).

Comrades Tingle, Hocking, Savva and Bongiorno all used the term “mandate”. All indicated that, because the Labor Party had won the December 1972 and May 1974 elections, it had a “mandate” to get its legislation passed by the Senate and enacted.

That’s a plausible argument. But it is not a universally accepted proposition. The Coalition governments headed by Malcolm Fraser, John Howard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison all won one or more elections – and all had some of their legislation defeated in the Senate. The point being that a majority of Labor plus minor parties/Independent senators at the time claimed that they had a mandate to reject legislation.

For example, the Howard government took a proposal that Australia should have a Goods & Services Tax (GST) to the 1998 election – and was returned to office. But it could not get its legislation through the Senate without major changes.

Correct Gerard Henderson if he is wrong. But Hendo does not recall the likes of Laura Tingle, Jenny Hocking or Frank Bongiorno marching in the streets calling on the Labor Party to uphold the Howard government’s mandate and pass the Coalition’s taxation reform legislation in the Senate. Ms Savva was working as a Coalition staffer in 1998 but Hendo does not recall her advocating that Labor should respect the mandate of the Abbott or Morrison governments.

It would have been lively television to hear the “Whitlam-had-a-mandate” view challenged by at least one qualified commentator who did not share this position. But no other view was heard. Once again, the taxpayer funded broadcaster failed to provide viewpoint diversity.

NEW FEATURE – EMPATHY WITH ELLIE

Unlike her predecessor, the late Jackie (Dip. Wellness, The Gunnedah Institute) the Media Watch Dog Ellie does not operate in the Wellness Space (pardon the cliché). However, Ellie has a BCS (Bachelor of Catastrophe Studies) from the Canberra Bubble Institute where she holds the entitled position of a Junk Professor.

ELLIE REACHES OUT TO A TOTALLY GUTTED JANE CARO WHO HAS JUST LEARNT THAT HER BESTIE IS A MAGA TRUMP-LOVER

Professor Ellie is well qualified to provide lotsa empathy to those who are stressed with what passes for life. And who can only benefit when Ellie recognises their pain and reaches out (again, pardon the cliché) by sharing her own pain. Here’s the first exchange in this new series. Step forward MWD’s fave leftist-luvvie Jane Caro:

Yesterday I found out my oldest friend was a Trump supporter. I knew she was an anti vaxxer but this was a bridge I thought she would not cross. She even told me Kamala was not black. Gutted.

— Jane Caro (@JaneCaro) August 4, 2024

And here is Ellie’s reach-out in reply:

Media Watch Dog additional images

Media Watch Dog will keep avid readers in the loop as to whether Ellie’s reach-out helps de-gut Comrade Caro.

A SHANE WRIGHT & CANDLESTICKS MOMENT

Nine’s Shane Wright has risen without trace (as the late Kitty Muggeridge once said about the late David Frost) to become the senior economics correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald – not having published anything of note apart from newspaper articles and columns plus the occasional essay. Even so, you would expect a person in such an elevated position would know about the international energy market. [As I recall, MWD reported that Comrade Wright told someone or other that he is about to write a book about Australian economic history. That should be good for MWD – MWD Editor]

It’s only a few years since your man Wright ridiculed anyone who said that coal had any future as a part of energy supply – even in such markets as India, China and Indonesia. He declared on ABC TV Insiders on 11 June, 2017 that “coal is like candlesticks” and compared those who said that there is still a demand for Australian coal exports with members of the Candle Makers Union circa 1870 who (allegedly) argued the case for candles over electricity. Now read on.

GLENCORE TO RETAIN ITS COAL DIVISION DESPITE THE VIEWS OF SHANE WRIGHT

On Wednesday 7 August news broke that Glencore, the Swiss commodities company which operates 15 coal mines in Australia, has decided to drop previously announced plans to spin off its coal division. In 2023, CEO Gary Nagle proposed to “demerge” Glencore’s coal assets into a new coal-focused company, thereby leaving Glencore free from ethical concerns around coal’s carbon emissions.

Apparently, Glencore shareholders were not too keen on the idea, indicating a strong preference for hanging on to the coal mines. Perhaps this is because Glencore’s coal division has, in recent years, generated record profits. On Wednesday, Nagle was quoted as saying “common sense has prevailed”. Quite so.

It would seem Glencore’s investors and its chief executive officer do not see Australian coal mines as equivalent to candles in 1870. Could it be that they have not been tuning into to ABC TV’s Insiders, nor reading the scribblings of Shane Wright in the Nine Newspapers?

HISTORY CORNER

EX-AGE JOURNALIST BARNEY ZWARTZ PRAISES HIMSELF IN THE SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA BUT IGNORES HIS FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE PEDOPHILIA IN GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

The 31 July issue of The Spectator Australia contains an article by Barney Zwartz, a former religious editor of The Age. Titled “In defence of legacy media”, it makes some important points about the value of traditional media in covering issues in some depth. It also contains sensible comments critical of “young activist journalists in mainstream media [who] tend to favour the causes of the left”.

Mr Zwartz subscribes to many newspapers and magazines which – in his own words – enables him “to be utterly confused about everything – but in an impartial way”. That’s a Zwartz joke.

In fact, Comrade Zwartz takes himself very, very seriously. How does Media Watch Dog know this? Well, Ellie’s (male) co-owner has read his Spectator piece with respect to the mainstream media’s role in the establishment of royal commissions. Here’s what Zwartz had to say in paragraph seven:

As religion editor for The Age from 2002 for twelve years, I played a small role with others in exposing clerical sexual abuse that led first to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry, then to the royal commission – surely one of the most important and effective in Australian history. When I began reporting on victims’ experiences, the police, state and church hierarchies had little interest, and only the tenacity and determination of the survivors and journalists forced action.

Well done Barney – and so on. The only problem is that the self-promotion is, well, somewhat exaggerated. Zwartz declares that between 2002 and 2014 he played a small role in exposing clergy sexual abuse at a time when “the police, state and church hierarchies had little interest”.

This is a self-serving exaggeration. It overlooks the fact that in 1996 Cardinal George Pell, in his position as the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, set up The Melbourne Response to deal with complaints about clerical sexual abuse in Catholic institutions in the Melbourne archdiocese. The other archbishops and bishops in Australia set up Towards Healing – to cover the same issue – the following year. The Melbourne Response was established with the support at the time of Victoria Police and the Victorian government. All this took place half a decade before Zwartz took up the position of The Age’s religious editor.

It is correct to state that media coverage – including that in The Age – about clerical sexual abuse contributed to the decision to set up what Zwartz describes as “the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry” and then to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse – which was presided over by Peter McClellan KC.

However, Zwartz did not tell Spectator readers the full title of the Victorian Inquiry. Here it is: “Inquiry into the Handling of Child Sexual Abuse by Religious and other Non-Government Organisations”. Note that the inquiry’s terms of reference did not cover child sexual abuse in government institutions – including state schools. Moreover, the McClellan Royal Commission undertook some 57 Case Studies – not one of which was into existing government schools anywhere in Australia.

Barney Zwartz should know this. Moreover, in recent times, the mainstream media has reported a large number of cases of historical child sexual abuse in government schools in Victoria and Tasmania. It’s reasonable to assume that inquiries in other states would reveal similar crimes. Recently boards of inquiry have revealed numerous cases of historical child sexual abuse in Tasmanian and Victorian State Schools back to the 1960s and 1970s.

The fact is that Mr Zwartz and his colleagues at The Age – along with Mr McClellan and his colleagues at the Royal Commission – did nothing to expose historical cases of child sexual abuse in state schools. It focused on the education systems of some religious institutions – mainly Catholic and Anglican schools plus a couple of Jewish schools. There was no Case Study into Muslim schools.

By the way, Zwartz was a Pell antagonist and part of the media pile-on against the Cardinal. This is documented in Gerard Henderson’s Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt (Connor Court 2021, republished 2022 and 2024) which has been “cancelled” by, among others, The Age and the ABC.

Writing in The Age on 28 February 2019 – after it was announced that Cardinal Pell had been convicted of historical child sexual assault – Zwartz confidently declared that “Pell’s guilty verdict by an independent jury” meant that his conviction would not be overturned as unsound.

Zwartz was hopelessly wrong. In George Pell v The Queen on 7 April 2020, in a unanimous judgment, the High Court of Australia quashed Cardinal Pell’s convictions. Needless to say, Barney Zwartz does not refer to false prophecy re the outcome of the Pell appeal in his Spectator piece in praise of the legacy media.

The fact is that both the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry and the Royal Commission failed to deal with pedophilia in government schools despite the Royal Commission having a budget of $372.8 million. Moreover, The Age (where Zwartz was religious editor) along with the ABC in Melbourne (where Pell antagonist Louise Milligan was based) also turned a blind eye to these crimes.

In 1996, George Pell set up a process to handle clerical sexual abuse. The Victorian government, in 2023, set up an inquiry to report on historical child sexual abuse in Victorian schools. Perhaps Barney Zwartz should write about this or The Spectator Australia in the not-too-distant future.

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Until Next Time

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